Trudeau used in warning from Harper

ACTON VALE, Que. – Pierre Trudeau has made a sudden reappearance in a Canadian federal election – a decade after his death.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper is warning that if his rivals get elected, the country will return to the dark days when it was led by his late Liberal predecessor.

The early 1970s – a time when a minority Liberal government relied on support from the NDP – led to long-term damage for the Canadian economy, Harper said Sunday.

“All they did was spend money,” he said from a farm in Acton Vale, Que.

It led to two decades of runaway spending, higher taxes, double-digit unemployment and interest rates, he added.

“We were a generation fixing those problems. When I look at the Liberal platform today … I’m saying that’s the alternative,” Harper said.

“That is the route the country will go down unless it stays on the path we’re on, with a strong, stable majority Conservative government.”

Harper may have been pleased to talk about his opponents’ platforms, but he was a little more vague when asked a key question about his own plan: Where would he find the $4 billion in annual budget cuts he’s promising?

Harper says it should be easy to find those so-called inefficiencies to help slay the deficit _ but is offering few clues about where he’ll cut.

His opponents, however, warn that cuts announced in the Tory platform could mean serious damage to social programs, like health care.

The NDP is promising to eliminate the red ink within four years in its platform, which was released Sunday.

The party is making the cornerstone pledge while at the same time committing itself to billions of dollars in new social spending.

The NDP is also ripping a page out of Harper’s 2006 campaign playbook and promising five key priorities to be accomplished in the first 100 days of taking office.

The Tories used a similar focused, easily understandable strategy to defeat Paul Martin’s Liberals.

The platform – the last one released by a major party – is a mix of previous New Democrat commitments from earlier campaigns and initiatives the party has already put before the House of Commons in proposed legislation.

It pledges to balance the federal books by 2014-15 and, while there is significant spending right away, senior campaign officials say it would not add to the deficit.

The centrepiece of the NDP’s fiscal plan is to restore the corporate tax rate to 19 per cent and to crack down on foreign tax havens. The NDP are also pledging to cut small business taxes by $1 billion.

There’s a promise to compensate Quebec for harmonizing its sales tax and another promise to pull out of the Afghan training mission.

The key planks of the Liberal platform revolve around education – including more money for students to attend university and for parents to afford day care.

The Liberal plan would be funded partly with a hike in corporate tax rates to last year’s rates. Some analysts warn, however, that there’s a fiscal hole of several billion dollars in their plan.

The Tories are accused of hiding an even bigger hole in their platform – by treating $4 billion in spending cuts like they’ve already happened and by announcing an increase in health spending without accounting for it.

When asked for his thoughts on Trudeau, personally, Harper was reluctant to mention him by name.

“He’s not here to defend himself. But as you know, Mr. Trudeau did have a different philosophy of government – a high-spending philosophy, centralizing philosophy – and that’s not the philosophy of this government.”